


A Tongue with No Cognates

by Tallulah_Rasa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-15 11:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2226654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallulah_Rasa/pseuds/Tallulah_Rasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Homecoming," Daniel has to learn some things all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tongue with No Cognates

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2004.

_Easy at first, the language of friendship_

_Is, as we soon discover,_

_Very difficult to speak well, a tongue_

_With no cognates, no resemblance_

_To the galimatias of nursery and bedroom,_

_Court rhyme or shepherd's prose,_

 

_And, unless often spoken, soon goes rusty._

_Distance and duties divide us,_

_But absence will not seem an evil_

_If it make our re-meeting_

_A real occasion._ _Come when you can:_

_Your room will be ready._

 

_From "For Friends Only" by W.H. Auden_

 

"I don't understand how this is supposed to help," Daniel said.

"Rooting though your past will help you connect with it," Jack said, checking the doctor's notes to make sure he had it right. "It's supposed to help you figure out who you are in the here and now. At least, that's what the doc said."

Daniel gave him a look Jack remembered all too well, one that preceded a lengthy and incomprehensible argument. "This isn't _my_ past, though," Daniel said.

Or maybe not. "Well, no," Jack conceded.

"So...?"

"You're interested in the past, in general. So the general past -- anyone's past -- could help, I thought. I mean, it's not like we can go back to the late 1960's and look around." He paused, thinking, and then shook his head. "Not again, anyway."

Daniel let that pass. "We could have gone to a museum," he said, and Jack couldn't tell if he was complaining or not.

"I don't like you _that_ much," Jack said. "And anyway, what's the difference? The stuff in a museum -- hell, the stuff you go on about at one of your digs -- that's all just somebody's old stuff, right?"

"There are historical impl\--"

"Right?" Jack pressed.

"It's a little more complica\--"

"I'm right. I'm right, aren't I?"

Daniel sighed. "In a manner of speaking, you're right."

"Exactly.  So...here we are."

Daniel looked around. "We're in the SGC lost-and-found, Jack."

"Other people's old, forgotten, dusty, discarded stuff," Jack agreed. He picked up a boot that had seen many, many better days, shook it, stuck his finger through a hole in its side, and put it down again. "You should love this place. Every old boot tells a story, right?" He picked up a worn duffel with 'Property of the USAF' stenciled on one side. "See? Some of this stuff even has inscriptions!"

Daniel sighed again.

"They won't let you off base to go to a museum, much less a dig," Jack said gently. "And Hammond said we only had a few hours till MacKenzie would want to talk to you."

"MacKenzie?"

"Yeah. Remember him?"

Daniel made a face. "Shrink?"

"Yeah."

"Had me committed?"

"That's the one. And you'd been on earth the whole time, then."

"Right," Daniel said, nodding. "Okay, let's find me."

"Where do we start?" Jack asked, looking around the cavernous room and tapping his watch.

"You're asking me?"

"You, archeologist," Jack said, pointing. "Me, flyboy."

"You, pain in the ass," Daniel muttered, turning to face the military shelving piled with labeled bins. The one at eye-level was crammed with articles of military-issue clothing, bits of unidentifiable but clearly broken odds-and-ends, single shoes, a rather garish red-and-orange tie, and, for some reason, a large, battered, Winnie-the-Pooh.

"See?" Jack asked, beaming. "Your memory's coming back already."

Daniel took a deep breath, but Jack could see the beginning of a smile. "Okay," Daniel said, "I seem to remember that standard operating procedure at a dig is to look at the most recent layers first. So -- top of the shelves?"

Jack checked a label. "Yeah, this looks like stuff from the past couple of months." Daniel reached up for a box, but Jack stopped him. "I know you're the archeological expert here, but shouldn't we look at older stuff first?"

Daniel stared at him, eyebrows working. "Oh. Because...I wouldn't remember the recent stuff, anyway, because I wasn't here."

"You were off in the wild blue glowy," Jack agreed.

"Jack," Daniel sighed, "it wasn't like th\--"

"What?" Jack asked anxiously when Daniel trailed off.

"I just...actually, it was," Daniel admitted with a small smile.

"Cool!" Jack said. "Like the Northern Lights? Or like that scene in _Star Wars_ where--"

"Um, maybe we ought to save that for later," Daniel said, gesturing to his watch.

"Right."

"MacKenzie."

"Right."

"So...maybe last year?"

Jack checked a few shelves and then pointed, grinning.

"What?"

Jack shrugged. "It's just -- I like the idea of you being around later."

"Let's hope you still feel that way a few hours from now," Daniel said, leading the way to the stacked shelves marked "2002: Jan-May". He stopped short, and Jack smacked into him.

"What? Did you remember something?"

Daniel turned, his face screwed up in concentration, or perhaps confusion. "I'm not sure. I just...I think the word for "pyramid" is 'haram'. In...in...in Urdu, I think."

"Well, that's something," Jack said.

"Is it?"

Jack thought for a moment, and then shook himself. "Here," he said, grabbing at a box on a shelf. "Look at this."

"It's full of books," Daniel said.

"Good. Remind you of anything?"

"They're repair manuals for automatic weapons," Daniel said. "From 1989."

"They're books," Jack insisted. "That means something to you, right?"

Daniel ran his fingers over the stack, as though practicing divination. "I...well, I...no. Sorry."

"Okay, what about this?"

Daniel settled on the floor with another box. "A tee shirt. Green. Medium. Torn. Three coffee mugs, all broken. A pipe." He looked up at Jack. "Do I know someone who smokes a pipe?"

"I have no idea."

"Me, either."

Jack sighed.

"Maybe I should try this in my lab," Daniel said.

"You remember your lab?

"No, but the...um, Sam...told me I had one."

Jack sighed again, and settled on the floor beside Daniel, groaning as his knees complained. "It's just like this. Full of dusty books and...and...artifacts," he said.

"Manufatto," Daniel said.

"Excuse me?"

Daniel frowned. "I think that's "artifacts" in Italian. Or Danish. It's all a little confusing."

"Like your lab," Jack said.

"I know a lot of languages," Daniel said. He didn't sound happy about it.

"What?" Jack asked. "Lots of people admire you for that."

"I don't know if I ever said anything important in any of them.  I don't know if I _knew_ anything important in any of them."

"You did," Jack assured him.

"I don't remember if I should believe you," Daniel said mournfully. It would have been a dramatic and even poignant moment if his stomach hadn't started growling right then.

"You like pizza and beer," Jack told him. "You like to buy. Let's get the hell out of here."

"MacKenzie?"

"I'll get Hammond to put him off," Jack said. He stood up and offered Daniel a hand. "Believe me."

Daniel took his hand.

* * *

They sat in Jack's living room over the remnants of a half-pepperoni, half-anchovy pizza, pepperoni because it was Jack's favorite, and anchovy because, despite Jack's assurances to the contrary, Daniel thought it might be his.

It wasn't.

"I don't think the lost-and-found helped much," Daniel said.

"That's okay," Jack told him, drawing a line in the condensation coating his beer bottle. "It was a stupid idea, anyway."

"No, it wasn't."

"Yes, it was."

"No, it wasn't. And anyway, it was interesting."

"How so?" Jack asked, holding out another beer to Daniel, who wrinkled his nose, but took it, anyway.

"Well, for one thing, there was a big gap after May, 2002. No boxes from June or July. How come?"

Jack looked at his plate for a while, and twisted his left-over pizza crusts. "Didn't seem worth keeping track of the little things that got lost then," he finally said.

Daniel's eyebrows arched. "Why?"

Jack looked at him. "We'd just lost something kind of big," he said.

"Oh," Daniel said, turning his focus to his own pizza crusts, which he carefully tore and stacked into a small, anchovy-smelling pyramid. After a while he looked up again and pushed up his glasses. "There's..." he began.

Jack took a deep breath. "What?"

"There's a piece of pizza left," Daniel said.

"Uh, yeah." Jack said. "There is, but it's cold."

Daniel smiled. "Okay, I think I've got it now. Cold is bad in pizza, but good in beer."

"Absolutely," Jack said. "And that's really all you need to know."

Daniel reached for the slice anyway. "Cold pizza isn't so bad," he said thoughtfully, chewing. He took a sip from his bottle and frowned at the label. "But this is crappy beer."

"You always say that," Jack said, slumping back onto the couch. "You really don't remember anything concrete, do you?"

Daniel shook his head. "Nothing. Just...fragments. Arguments, or bits of arguments. Unpacking a suitcase. Running from something. Eating a hamburger -- oh, I can even remember how it smelled on the grill.  Stars.  Something blasting.  A lot of somethings blasting. The sound of...a hockey game, I think, when I was trying to read an article about an archeological expedition in the Yucatan."

"Nothing," Jack said.

Daniel shook his head again. "Everything."

"What?"

" _Everything._ Loss. Discovery. Pain. Confusion. Happiness. Just the context is shaky." He looked at Jack, but not, this time, as though trying to place him. "I remember...feelings. Even if I don't remember their roots. I remember belonging. Familiarity." He looked down at the beer still in his hand. "Friendship."

"But no context," Jack said.

"Not yet," Daniel said. "Maybe not ever. But context isn't everything, I think. I mean, there have to be other ways to figure things out. To understand them."

"Well, you'd know," Jack said.

"I would?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that would definitely be your department."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"So, remember anything yet?"

" _Jack_..."

"About the 'knowing things even without context' thing, I mean."

"What? Oh." Daniel sat and thought. "Well, I remember...sometimes something reminds you of other things.  And research can help.  Books, journals...they can point you in the right direction."

"You used to do a lot of research," Jack said. "When you were trying to translate weird stuff."

"Did it help?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes...I don't know."

"What?"

"Sometimes...I think you just guessed."

Daniel placed one more careful piece on his pizza crust pyramid. "Maybe. But I sort of remember..."

"What?"

Well, sometimes...with some things...I just _knew_. I think that happens. Sometimes you just _know_."

"Ah," Jack said. "So...?"

"Me, archeologist," Daniel said.

Jack nodded. Then he started grinning. He couldn't have said why.

"You, friend with cold pizza and crappy beer," Daniel said. He stood up, as though preparing to say something profound, tilted his head back, stretched out his arms, and let loose with a yawn so enormous it seemed he might dislocate his jaw.

"By George, I think he's got it!" Jack said. He was still grinning. He even knew why. "But all that thinking seems to have worn you out. You could take a nap, you know. You used to stay here all the time. Do you remember where the guest room is?"

Daniel turned around a few times, and then stopped and looked at Jack. "You know what archeologists do?" he asked, as though he'd just discovered something, or maybe just remembered it. "They unearth important stuff, no matter how deep it's buried, or how long it's been lost." He yawned again.

"That's nice, Daniel," Jack said, standing up and patting Daniel's shoulder. "But the room...?"

"I'll find it," Daniel said.

 

END

 


End file.
